i teach five different classes (classes, not sections! ) and I have an announcement to make to all my classes. Currently, the only way seems to be - make the announcement five times, once in each class.

Just this week, we were discussing Announcements as a kind of object in Canvas that might be worth treating the same way we treat Discussions and Assignments. If we were to pursue that path, we could potentially support a scenario where teachers could create Announcements in one area, which are then fed into separate courses the same way managed content might be. This is part of some long-term planning and discussion going on, so I can't give any timelines. And this certainly isn't something we will address in the next six months. But it is a great idea and one we will continue to explore.

I certainly understand your frustration. Cutting/Pasting announcements repeatedly into a course can be a hassle. Have you tried opening your courses in separate tabs and simply cut/paste announcements quickly that way? I think that makes the process much more efficient. One of the nice things about Canvas is that you can courses open in multiple tabs.

I have the same issue. I've tried uploading an announcement to Commons, but it is VERY slow and doesn't seem to appear I've I've told it to import into another course. This should be an easy fix for those of us who must post the same announcement to multiple courses. I have six separate classes and posting the same announcement six times is tedious. I'm considering setting up an RSS/Atom feed, which may alleviate the issue until Instructure fixes this issue.

Is there a way we can spread the word in the community about this possible fix? I have done so at my school. This is the first year for Canvas at my school and a lot of teachers (mainly older ones) aren't quite on board yet. Are there ways we can spread the word to the Community at large rather than just within our schools?

There are situations at our university where a course coordinator may need to post a single announcement to 10-30 sections or more. Being able post to multiple courses at once would be useful in some situations.

It would also be nice to be able to select a set of courses for an announcement/email (e.g. all T sections, but not W or all ENGL 100, but not ENGL 340).

I want to add my encouragement, and suggest deeper implementation. I would love, as mentioned to share announcements, messages, images, files, and even wiki pages to courses by selecting from active courses. I often have to repeat the same process. This could reduce the need for me to cross list multiple sections. In addition to the per course selection. I'd like to see an easy way to push these pages and information to specific groups within a course.

"Add External Feed" to your course Announcements area, in multiple courses, and post your announcement via RSS. I have tested this out, and conceptually, it works, but the feed is not polled as often as I would like.

Definitely want to be able to make the same announcement across courses. I would also like to be able to take an announcement received in one course and forward to others. For example, some of our schools have created faculty and staff courses for their teachers. Teachers would like to be able to forward certain announcements received in that course to students in their own courses.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. It sounds like the problem we're trying to solve is managing the same content across courses. I know that this problem is on our radar and we're actively looking at solutions. I will find out if the solutions we're considering include "master" announcements that can be published simultaneously in multiple courses.

I work at a community college, and I could see this being useful if an emergency arose and an instructor was going to have to cancel classes for the day because a sub could not be found. It would allow the instructor to send just one message instead of needing to message each course. What would be nice is if it could be designed similar to how the current selection box in Conversations is designed for selecting multiple student recipients or all.

I too have this same problem. I teach three classes as semester but as an visual and digital media arts teacher my students are familiar with the fact I like to update them on my twitter finds, events in the world, innovations, post-secondary or extracurricular opportunities, etc. that I find online. I like to share that with all of my students whether I am teaching them or not. Additionally, when school-wide events are happening, I like to remind them. It is definitely cumbersome to copy and paste the same announcement six times.

This may sound convoluted, but it works. Add an "Notify All Classes" RSS feed to the Announcements section of each course with the "Add External Feed" option.

Create a Group "Notify All Classes" in one of your courses and add no one to it. "Visit Group Homepage" and add "+Announcement". You can copy the RSS feed URL that is created for the Announcements for this group. Paste that URL in the appropriate windows as you create an external feed for Announcements for each of your courses. *The one drawback I see currently is that I am not sure how often Canvas polls "external" RSS feeds. So, although you post a new announcement under "Notify All Classes," it might not get disseminated to the other courses' Announcements immediately. **Looks like it took about 30 minutes before the external RSS feed was polled.

You could use any RSS feed URL, from either within or without Canvas. A WordPress feed, or some other app that creates RSS entries.

Just this week, we were discussing Announcements as a kind of object in Canvas that might be worth treating the same way we treat Discussions and Assignments. If we were to pursue that path, we could potentially support a scenario where teachers could create Announcements in one area, which are then fed into separate courses the same way managed content might be. This is part of some long-term planning and discussion going on, so I can't give any timelines. And this certainly isn't something we will address in the next six months. But it is a great idea and one we will continue to explore.

Can't upvote since votes aren't being taken right now, but I absolutely SECOND the need for this feature. Again, something I was accustomed to doing on my old LMS for numerous situations. Having to copy and paste in all classes is inconvenient. Thanks.

I can definitely see the need for this; I teach two classes and use the same announcements for both. That's one of the reasons why a blog-as-announcements-homepage works for me. I update the blog once, and it shows up automatically in the Canvas space for my three courses (one class has two sections). Not everybody can use all the same announcements for multiple classes; I am very glad I can do that. :-)

Hi John Ling, it is possible to do RSS as Frank Cohen mentioned there, but since I want the blog to actually "be" my homepage, I use an iframe so that I can make it the homepage of the Pages, and thus for the course. I did a CanvasLIVE about that with details:

(that vanity URL redirects to a Canvas course; I can use the same URL over and over again, just changing for each semester)

I am a huge fan of live content streams like this: blogs, Twitter, etc. My goal is to use tools outside of Canvas while allowing that live content to show up inside. It's a POSSE thing: Publish on One Site; Syndicate Everywhere. :-)

I strongly agree with the desire to make a common announcement to multiple classes/courses. I'm not sure if it has been discussed or is obvious, but "all" infers to me literally all, rather than having the ability to choose amongst your courses which ones to send it to. I vote for the second, pick and choose which ones. Years ago I approached our Blackboard administrator about this. Now we are just adopting Canvas and I was told my problem would be solved, but to no avail. Please give us this functionality. Copy and pasting gets old fast.